My Journey
My background...
I always loved school. It was a place where I made life-long friends and learned fascinating things about the world I lived in. Most of all I loved the art of discovery. This was most evident in my math classes. My love affair with mathematics started in ernest when I entered Grade 10. My formal education in math ended with a B.Sc. in Honours Mathematics, and my love continued. For my day job, I entered the world of IT.
Early in my career I was offered the opportunity to become a member of a team at a large pulp and paper mill on the west coast of Canada. The team was on the hunt for a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). I was their technical advisor. It was then that I fell in love with the men and women who maintained the fast-moving rolling equipment that made pulp and paper. They were incredible problem solvers, dedicated to keeping the mill up-and-running 24 X 7.
From that point on and inspired by my passion to make a contribution, my career focused on maintenance, reliability, and then asset management. I loved the proximity to the shop floor, the source of production and revenue. My mathematical mind drew me towards the rigour I found in Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), Root Cause Analysis (RCA), Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Execution, and certain Business Process Management (BPM) methods.
I mastered these disciplines during my years as a management consultant. Aware of my growing knowledge, I began to document and categorize what I was learning in a starter kit named the Reliability Improvement Starter Kit® using Microsoft Office tools. This approach was helpful, but too limiting. Worse, when consulting gigs came to an end, the deliverables were handed off in these tools. In truth, the deliverables were in an e-binder that was not visible, difficult to reference, and never changed or improved.
I knew I needed a database for my starter kit. It was getting too big for me. I wanted to create a reusable solution that would be sustainable for the customer.
Thus began my journey as a product developer that became a solution = rich content powered by technology.
